The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for manufacturing a semiconductor device, for example, used for forming a film by supplying a reaction gas to the surface of a semiconductor wafer while heating the rear surface of the semiconductor wafer.
In recent years, as a semiconductor device is requested to realize lower price and higher performance, higher productivity in film forming process of a wafer and higher quality such as improvement in uniformity in film thickness is also required.
To satisfy such requirements, a back heating method is employed, which uses a single-wafer-processing epitaxial growth apparatus, supplies process gas while rotating a wafer at high speed of 900 rpm or higher in a chamber, and heats the wafer from the rear surface by using a heater.
Such a back heating method has a problem. When a wafer at room temperature is loaded into a chamber preliminarily heated to, for example, about 700° C. and transferred onto a member, a center member is cooled. Consequently, the temperature in a center portion in the wafer decreases, and temperature variation occurs. A method of excessively heating a center member is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-43302 ([0028] to [0029] and the like).